Friday, April 8, 2022

Twelfth Night: A Relatively-Sour Malvolio

Twelfth Night. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Produced and Directed for Television by Paul Kafno. Perf. Frances Barber, Christopher Hollis, Julian Gartside, Tim Barker, Richard Briers, Caroline Langrishe, Anton Lesser, Abigail McKern, Shaun Prendergast, Christopher Ravenscroft, James Saxon, and James Simmons. 1988. VHS. Renaissance Theatre Company / Thames Television, 2013.
Who'd like to see what the great and ubiquitous Richard Briers did with the role of Malvolio (under the direction of the similarly-ubiquitous Kenneth Branagh)?

Well, I know I would. And I'm supposed to be in charge of this blog, after all!

Here we have it. At the opening of the scene, we find a pretty sour Malvolio. Even his fantasy about being Count Malvolio, married to Olivia, doesn't bring him out of his bitterness. But he certainly lights up at the discovery of the letter!

Links: The Film at IMDB.

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

 —The Tempest